a. In a taste test of a new beer, 25 people rated the new beer and another 25 rated the leading brand on the market. The possible ratings were Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good, and Excellent. The responses for the new beer and the leading beer were stored using a 1-2-3-4-5 coding system. Can we infer that the new beer is less highly rated than the leading brand?

b. The responses were recorded so that 3 = Poor, 8 = Fair, 22 = Good, 37 = Very Good, and 55 = Excellent. Can we infer that the new beer is less highly rated than the leading brand?

c. What does this exercise tell you about ordinal data?